Lessons on repeat

Daniel Burt
May 17, 2012

M*A*S*H still holds up well.

Digital TV reruns enable humanity to learn and bond. Over and over.

We all eventually experience a ''Wait, did I just get old?'' moment. These unsettling realisations are not medical, but cultural. Knowledge you attain just from being alive, which anchors you to the world and is so pervasive as to feel perennial, is exposed in a flash as irrelevant. If details that constitute your time on Earth are reduced to a footnote - and a footnote others won't bother to read - then you, too, are not far from irrelevance.

My first such moment was overhearing one teenage girl say to another, ''Did you know Dave Grohl was in a band before the Foo Fighters?'' Sure, it doesn't seem like much, but I remember requiring medical attention. Another recent pang of mortality came during this year's Oscars ceremony, when young people jumped online to ask, ''Who the hell is this Billy Crystal guy?''

Self-appointed bastions of culture grow flustered at the prospect of literary classics disappearing from high school curriculums. Print, cinema and decades-old music are valuable primary-source evidence of cultural history. Vegetables forced down the throats of one generation are passionately regurgitated for the next.

But much of early television lacks anthropological clout and so has been consigned to the compost. Esteem for TV is likely to evolve, given the quality of US productions of the past several years. If Shakespeare were alive today he would probably be writing for HBO.

I'm as self-involved as the next guy, whoever he is. But I see value in knowing about stuff that happened before I was born. This belief covers Whitlam's dismissal as much as nudity in Number 96. Keeping abreast (sorry) of history, no matter how trivial, helps form threads of understanding through different generations. Shared knowledge means we all get the same joke, Joyce.

Parody can strengthen a reference and make you feel as though you've absorbed a show through osmosis. While I've never sat through an episode of MacGyver, I still know he could divert a North Korean missile with duct tape.

Not long ago, I was in the Magistrates Court (supporting a friend, Your Honour). The prosecution approached us before the hearing and encouraged my friend to settle. The lawyer warned that if she did not settle, then he ''might have to get all Perry Mason''. The iconic Perry Mason TV series aired its final episode in 1966. Perhaps the lawyer was referring to the novels or one of the made-for-TV movies, but I think that some time in the '80s, this poor guy simply stopped updating his pop culture Rolodex. And no one even uses a Rolodex any more.

I knew the name and reputation of Perry Mason, such is the power of reruns. Ye olde programs on free-to-air have neared extinction but government-mandated multichannels have resulted in networks having untold hours to fill. Television isn't as flush as it once was, so these stations aren't exactly bursting with new Australian content.

7TWO describes itself as "a broad entertainment channel offering all our viewers greater choice through a variety of shows with something for everyone no matter what your age". In other words, a dumping ground.

Sometimes it's difficult to know whether an old program is on TV because it's significant, or whether it's significant because it's on TV. Certain shows seem to be syndicated ad infinitum, with American sitcoms being the cockroaches of entertainment. I was born 12 years after the cancellation of Bewitched and even I have a favourite Darrin. Digital stations are a nursing home for shows that are more than 40-years-old. On any given day, one can drift off to Bewitched, Hogan's Heroes, Get Smart, The Love Boat, I Dream of Jeannie, Green Acres, M*A*S*H, The Brady Bunch and Dad's Army. Oh! Happy Days.

One wonders whether, 40 years from now, kids will be gathered around their version of a television set, fascinated by the unusual values and behaviour of deceased cast members of Two and a Half Men. It's a delicious thought.

Wishing to bone up on nostalgic shows I'd never seen, I sought to familiarise myself with the more dated digital TV offerings. Old series such as The Love Boat were new to me. These days, if there was a show set on a cruise ship, it wouldn't be a comedy, it would be horror.

Here is a brief summary of some old titles on multichannels for those who are too young, too busy or just too uninterested to watch:

Bewitched: Domestic, high-strung patriarchy with special effects.

Hogan's Heroes: Good natured Nazi-ribbing.

Get Smart: Security incompetence when it was funny, not reality.

The Love Boat: Double Ds on the high seas.

Green Acres: Poking fun at farmers without fear of being shot.

M*A*S*H: Macabre* Anti-war* Sitcom* with Heart*.

The Brady Bunch: Tea Party Utopia.

I Dream of Jeannie: G-rated sex slavery.

Dad's Army: Military service for the Metamucil set.

Happy Days: Good old-fashioned American values (no blacks allowed).

Charlie's Angels: Women with attitude and daddy issues.

It's natural that we prefer to watch a show about the '60s than one from the '60s. Mad Men, Underbelly, Boardwalk Empire, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries and Bikie Wars all depict bygone eras from a contemporary perspective. But as with literature, music and art, being aware of previous generations' television helps put us on the same culture page. ''Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it'' is a caution usually invoked in matters of politics, but it applies equally to episodes of Kingswood Country.

Retelling a campfire story not only keeps the story alive but also the memory of those who have told it. I encourage young people to investigate entertainment from before their time. And I'm sure Billy Crystal would appreciate it.